MUNCIE – Ball State basketball coach James Whitford has said since the preseason that the success of his team this season is predicated on the play of his four seniors.

Yet through the opening two games, the four true freshmen arguably outplayed the seniors and stood out as the bright spot for the Cardinals. That trend seemed destined to continue Monday night after Ball State fell behind Southeast Missouri by nine points and a lineup with four freshmen and sophomore Bo Calhoun rallied the team to a five-point halftime cushion.

But in the second half after SEMO responded with a comeback of its own to take the lead in the final five minutes, the seniors delivered and propelled Ball State to an 87-83 victory in front of a crowd of 2,765 in Worthen Arena.

“We won this game because of them,” said Whitford, whose team improved to 2-1. “No question.”

The play of the game occurred at the 3:51 mark when senior Jesse Berry missed a 3-pointer and fellow senior Chris Bond followed with a putback slam.

“I seen no one crash,” Bond said. “I thought he was going to hit it, but I still just crashed and I got it. It was just off instinct.”

Bond scored nine of his career-high 20 points in those final four minutes, ignited by the putback slam and capped by finishing on an alley-oop feed from freshman point guard Zavier Turner.

The 6-foot-4 senior scored 15 total points and took four shots from the field in the opening two games. He put up five shots before the first media timeout and 11 overall against SEMO (2-2) in a fast-paced game that suited his slashing style of play.

“CB more than anyone on our team relies on the other guys sharing the ball,” Whitford said. “He’s not a guy that’s necessarily creating his own shot. … But when the ball gets shared and moved around and advanced in transition and he has lanes to the rim, that’s when he’s at his best.”

Berry nearly matched Bond in productivity with seven of his 19 points in the final seven minutes. Overall, Berry sank only 3-of-11 3-pointers, but he drained one to put the Cardinals up two at the 6:45 mark and then buried another in transition to extend the lead to four with 3:14 left in the game.

The seniors put the Cardinals in position to win the game and the freshman Turner finished off the Redhawks by sinking four free throws in the final 32 seconds.

Turner produced another impressive stat line with 19 points (4-of-5 on 3-pointers) and five assists. He is the first Ball State player to hit or surpass the 17-point, 4-assist thresholds in his first three games since Larry Bullington (1973-74) and the first Ball State freshman to score 17 or better in his first three games since Jim Fields (1975-76).

The Ball State freshman point guard served as a one-man press break against the SEMO 1-2-2 and 2-2-1 traps.

“His greatest strength is that he’s really smart,” Whitford said. “… When they went to that press, the number of times we left him in the backcourt by himself and he got the ball to Jesse and CB versus the pressure which led to baskets for us was a really, really big part of the game, and it was all him.”

Turner played far from flawless, though. He made his share of freshman mistakes in the second half as SEMO rallied from an eight-point deficit to take the lead. Whitford subbed him out for a couple minutes and advised him to settle down and pay attention to the holes in the SEMO zone defense.

Whitford put Turner back in for the final four minutes and the freshman returned to his stellar form.

Ball State started slowly, blew a second-half lead and surrendered 62 points to the talented SEMO frontcourt trio of Jarekious Bradley, Tyler Stone and Nino Johnson. But the Cardinals overcame all of that for a confidence-boosting win as a grueling six-game stretch awaits, starting Saturday at home against Butler.

“I told our team the good news for us is we’re going to be way better four months from now than we are today, so the fact we were able to win this game was encouraging for me,” Whitford said.